Baron-Rivendare
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Previewing Curse of Naxxramas' neutral minions
Sometime this month, Blizzard is expected to release Hearthstone's first adventure pack Curse of Naxxramas. The pack will come with single player adventures, along with 30 new cards that should shake up the metagame and breathe some fresh air into the ladder scene. Pricing details were announced yesterday, and now seems an apt time to begin looking over the cards we'll be seeing in Naxxramas. Thus far, five neutral cards have officially been announced. Dancing Swords Dancing Swords is an intriguing minion at three mana. The magical blades boast a highly coveted 4/4 body, able to ignore specific priest removal while still having a thick enough hide to endure most popular area of effect spells. In exchange for the amazing statline, Dancing Swords awards opponents a card upon expiring. In a perfect world, Dancing Swords is used to quickly mow down a foe before the deathrattle ever becomes an issue. It seems like we won't be seeing this minion in anything other than fast paced aggression setups.
The OverAchiever: Mountain O' Mounts in 5-man dungeons
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we continue our Mountain o' Mounts grind by beating the crap out of various bosses in the hopes that they'll barf up some transportation. This week's article addresses the mounts you can find in 5-man content, of which there are quite a few. However, please note that I haven't included special holiday mounts like the Headless Horseman's mount or the Big Love Rocket. Even though they technically drop from 5-man content, they're only available under special circumstances, so they'll pop up in a later guide. As a note to anyone following the Mountain o' Mounts series, I'll be preempting it for two weeks to run full guides on the Noblegarden and Children's Week 2011 holidays, which begin on April 24 and May 1 respectively. We'll return to Mountain o' Mounts on May 5. Also read: Combining The Ambassador and Mountain O' Mounts, Mountain O' Mounts in Outland, and Mountain O' Mounts in Northrend.
Breakfast Topic: What if achievements had existed in classic WoW?
One of our readers, Eli, wrote in last night with a suggestion for a Breakfast Topic: if achievements had existed in classic WoW, what would they have been? It provoked some back-channel discussion here with staffers wondering how the game would have been different if beating the boss or dungeon wasn't the only thing on your plate:Me: What would a hard-mode Ragnaros have been like?Adam Holisky: Kill Ragnaros using only one tank!Eliah Hecht: Domo comes back from the dead and starts randomly sheeping raid members in revenge.Other suggestions included killing Hakkar with all of his priests still up, hearthing with Hakkar's debuffs and infecting at least 500 players with Corrupted Blood (back when this was still possible, of course), killing at least 500 Dwarves without dropping combat in the Lyceum, the Stratholme timed run, and -- as Sacco suggested -- "getting through an UBRS run without (anyone) quitting." Having recently leveled a Shaman through this content, I can tell you that's one achievement I wouldn't have managed.If you were back in classic WoW again with no chance of advancing beyond level 60 talents and gear, what would make for a worthwhile achievement?
Ask a Lore Nerd: Yeah, I've been working out
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.Last week I answered a question about the Kor'kron and I messed it up a wee bit, which I don't mind admitting. I said that the Kor'kron were all Orcs, but I didn't notice that in Wrath of the Lich King it actually includes a number of Trolls. The Kor'kron were originally only really seen in Thrall's throne room originally, they were his personal guard at the time and 100% Orcs. In Wrath, they've apparently spread out and include a couple of the other races as well.So who makes up the Kor'kron? The Orcs primarily. Trolls secondary, and there are also a few Tauren and Taunka thrown in as well. I haven't seen any Undead or Blood Elves among the Kor'kron yet, they seem to keep to their own little militaries for now.frostymage asked... Why aren't the Knights of the Ebon Blade flying the Acherus to Northrend? It said in one of the DK starter quests that it could destroy Naxxramas.
Behind the Curtain: What keeps you going?
This week, I have been mostly killing Baron Rivendare. I'm now sitting with 65 kills under my belt, with no Deathcharger to show for it. We are not amused, and are now convinced that Blizzard hates us. Precious. Sss. I have the run down to a science now – dodge one pack of mobs, step aside from that pat, kill this group, spank the boss, rinse and repeat. Then repeat it again, and again, and again, and again, and again. I'm sure you get the idea.I was talking with one of my colleagues at my 'real' job just the other day, when he asked me if I had anything planned for the evening. I started to plan my response in my head, trying to come up with an easy way to translate, in non-gamer terms, what I'd been doing with my time of late. I ended up going with, "Not much" because I just couldn't figure out how to explain it without taking half an hour.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Death Knight
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the eighteenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. Originally I had planned to write about death knights only after I had written about all the other classes, as a way of wrapping up and rounding out this whole series of articles about the lore behind the playable races and classes of World of Warcraft. But then ZuWho posted a comment on my last article specifically requesting me for my thoughts on death knights -- and even used the word "pleeeaase!" So of course I'm always a sucker for such polite requests, especially comments like this with really insightful questions. Today we'll look specifically at these questions and see what possible answers come to mind.To a certain extent, we already covered a number of possibilities for death knight characters about 6 months ago. However, while most of those possibilities are still valid, there was so much we didn't know about the player-character death knight lore at that time, and there are definitely some points that need updating.
Ask a Beta Tester: Baron Rivendare, heirloom items, and more
Remember a little while ago on Ask a Beta Tester, someone asked if Jaina Proudmoore has any role in Wrath? And I said no, she has no new story involvement? Well, a recent beta patch made a fool out of me. She has a role, it's epic, and no she doesn't make out with Arthas you horrible, horrible people.And with that out of the way, let's get on with the questions. Shadgalaul asked...What about the whole dual-spec situation? Was this implemented, or did it just fade out and get scrapped? This hasn't been implemented yet, and nobody is sure whether it's on hold or been scrapped. It seems like instead of giving dual specs, they're trying to make one spec be able to hold its own. For example, tanks are getting higher DPS so they can go off and do their quests without wanting to hang themselves. It's not a perfect solution and there are still a few balance issues, but I bet that if they shelved the dual spec thing, this is what they tried instead.We may still see dual specs in the future, but we haven't so far.
PTR Brewfest includes summoned barmaid pets, rams and kodos segregated by faction
You may remember that we announced that a Brewfest Kodo was hidden in the WoTLK Alpha files some time ago. With patch 2.4.3, the Kodo did in fact get into this year's Brewfest. The Brewfest is currently open for testing on the PTR, and you can see the Kodos for yourselves - but only on the Horde side. That's right. Blizzard has added the Kodo mount, but not in the way many of us had hoped. The Ram mount is now available for purchase only on the Alliance side, and the Kodo mount only on the Horde side. Kisirani has confirmed that this is intended. She says that they came to this decision only after much deliberation, but it's likely staying, although she'll listen to constructive criticism. As you can imagine, this has not been well received.
The Brewfest Kodo and what it may mean for WotLK's release date
Tipster Graffias pointed out an exciting find in the latest leaked Alpha files for WoTLK: An Icon for a Brewfest Kodo. You may recall that last year's Brewfest included a Ram mount that was purchasable with tickets by both sides, allowing the Horde very easy access to an Alliance mount with a few days of grinding for Brewfest Prize Tickets. Many Alliance weren't happy with this, annoyed that the Horde got such easy access to an Alliance mount without having to kill Baron Rivendare or a Troll a couple hundred times. Bornakk decided that the best way to answer this criticism would be by promising the Alliance that the Horde would be getting access to yet another previously alliance-only mount skin in the Cenarion War Hippogryph. Of course, Kisirani, being as awesome as she is, later said that we should have patience and things would work out in the end. Listening to the words of the world designer seem to have paid off, as it looks like the Dwarves are going to turn the tables on the Goblins this year and steal some Kodos from them. I can finally fulfill my dream of owning my very own Kodo. My Night Elf Druid is from Kalimdor after all, and you would think there would be some Night Elves who decided to domesticate Kodos as beasts of burden too. But really, as much as I am looking forward to grabbing myself a Kodo (and seeing a tiny Gnome riding around on a huge beast of burden), what's really exciting is this thought: If the Brewfest is in late September to early October, does that mean Blizzard is planning to give us WoTLK by September, Brewfest Kodo and all?
Breakfast Topic: The clothes you wish you could wear
It happens a lot: you see some random NPC in the world wearing a certain item or clothing and you wonder "hey! Can I can a polearm like that somewhere?" You might even do some searching and find it's not available for players, only NPCs. Most often it's a weapon of some kind, but sometimes it's a particular set of shoulders, or a matching set of armor the like of which doesn't actually exist. Sometimes it's a unique item with a really powerful pizzazz.I always liked the nifty scarf featured here on Baron Rivendare, as well as on the death knight pictured in yesterday's breakfast topic. It probably would be hard to make this sort of scarf work for tauren, but all the other races could wear it pretty well, it seems. It would definitely be a match for death knights who want to look the part, or anyone who wants that certain dastardly debonair look.What items have you seen NPCs wearing that you wish you could wear too?
Cloak of Shadows: 5 - Baroness Anastari: 0
Inspired by an old post about the Endgame Bosses Being Bored a couple of post-60 folks in my guild decided to pay Baron Rivendare a visit (and take some 55+ folks for a drag) as opposed to fighting for spawns in Outland. The sad thing is that this particular instance run simply drove home the point that Old Endgame just isn't nearly what it used to be. The first thing we noticed was how utterly easy the mobs were. Gone is the time when a 45 minute run was proof of skill at L60 for non-raiding guilds. With the inclusion of a L68 Shaman healer and a L66 rogue, the instance became a cakewalk, completed in a blazingly fast 28 minutes from start to finish. (including looting) But the eye-opening sad/funny part was to come when the party got to Baroness Anastari.As anyone who has been in Dead-side (or UD) Stratholme will tell you, the Baroness can be a bit annoying. Or at least, she could be when you were level 60, and you invariably got someone who forgot to burn all their cool-downs at the beginning of the fight. (To explain, the Baroness mind-controls a party-member and disappears. If you have special trinkets or talents, she is likely to use them immediately on your fellow party members.) So, with a few freshly minted near/60s in tow, the group jumped her, and everyone blew their cool-downs. Well, everyone except the rogue, not being used to that Cloak of Shadows button on his bar yet. Sure enough, first possession target was that same rogue. It went a little something like this:
